Just over 5 years since the massively destructive 2011 Japanese earthquake which unleashed a tsunami and led to the Fukushima disaster, moments ago NHK reported that Japan's Kumamoto region had been hit with another quake which had a Shindo shaking intensity of 7 and registered a magnitude of apprxoimately 6.4.

According to the Japanese media this is the strongest quake to hit Japan since the 2011 earthquake. The good news is that so far there has been no tsunami alert.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told a news conference that damage was being assessed. A number of houses have collapsed, but there was no abnormality at nearby nuclear facilities, Suga said.

"There was a ka-boom and the whole house violently shook sideways," Takahiko Morita, a resident in Mashiki, a town at the epicenter, told a telephone interview with NHK TV. "Furniture and bookshelves fell down, books were all over the floor."

Morita said there is no power outage in his neighborhood but water supply was cut off. Some houses and walls collapsed, he said.

Keisukei Urata, an official at nearby Uki city, said he was driving home when the quake struck at 9:26 p.m.

He also said he saw some walls around houses collapsing.

Parts of the ceiling at Uki City Hall also collapsed, windows were broken and cabinets fell to the ground, he said.

Kasumi Nakamura, an official in the village of Nishihara near the epicenter, said that the rattling started modestly and grew violent, lasting about 30 seconds.

"Papers, files, flower vases and everything fell on the floor," he told NHK. He said there were aftershocks.

News"...No tsunami warning was issued, but local media reported that the tremors felt were comparable to the 1995 Kobe earthquake and the March 2011 quake which struck northeastern Japan..."

Kobe? Jesus... that was kind of bad, wasn't it?

"...The Nuclear Regulation Authority said there were no irregularities at three nuclear plants on the southernmost island of Kyushu and nearby Shikoku..."

But until they can check the smoking, strangely-glowing ruins, they won't know for sure.

"...As a precaution, the Japanese PUblic Safety Office near the Sandai Nuclear Power Plant have switched from passing out iodine tablets to cyanide tablets. "We hope citizens do the right thing and do no become a burden on the nuclear industry," said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. "There is no way to protect yourself from the horrible effects of radiation. You will die, anyway. Please be considerate of others." "

The remote-controlled robots that were sent into the site of the 2011 meltdown at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Japan have reportedly 'died', thanks to incredibly high amounts of leaked radioactive materials destroying their wiring.

The robots - which take years to manufacture - were designed to swim through the underwater tunnels of the now-defunct cooling pools, and remove hundreds of extremely dangerous blobs of melted fuel rods. But it looks like that’s not going to happen any time soon.

... It’s estimated that the team has so far only addressed 10 percent of the mess left behind by the meltdowns, and the pressure to get a move-on is certainly not going to go away any time soon, with news last December that the damaged plant is continuing to leak small amounts of radioactive materials into the Pacific Ocean. Radioactive material has even been showing up on the west coast of the US. ...

Nope. It is the other guy. Take a look at their history. For 85% of it they are perfectly happy just doing their own thing and not interacting/imposing on the rest of the world. Some topics to consider. Divine Wind (mongol invasion). Admiral Perry (Gunboat Diplomacy/Manifest Destiny). WWII was about oil and rubber, the west said they could not have any, they should just accept these nuclear reactors and bombs and keep their mouths shut.

And ALGORE's. If earthquakes break apart those 27 old nuclear reactors on the island of Japan and scatter them to the winds/currents, then we can buy some new "next-gen" reactors from Bill Gates. This will stop us humans from killing ourselves with climate change.